I keep getting my butt kicked by street thugs.

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I'm a 5th level fighter with crappy physical stats. Any advice?

 

Don't mess with them until you're a bit tougher.

 

Use bandages and rely on Morte to wipe them out.

 

Who do you have with you? Where are you?

 

early on you're bound to take damage from thug encounters. What you may be having difficulty with, is the sheer number of thugs that attack you. This is a consequence of low charisma.
Low charisma will limit dialogue options, but earns you XP by these encounters. You'll have to endure, i'm afraid. soon you'll be powerful enought to take them on...

 

If you're powergaming for dialogue options you don't have to be surprised getting your butt kicked.

Those thugs will will be easier to handle when you gain levels, weapon specialisation and a third party member. The last two can be achieved within a few minutes, but I won't spoil it unless you ask for it.

You can die from thug encounters as often as you want without negative consequences except getting annoyed for having to walk the way again and again, you can also try running away if you don't want to die.

 

Morte has stupidly high resistance to physical damage. Let him do the tanking, he's well capable of taking out a bunch of thugs on his own. Leave TNO out of the way, be very careful to keep the enemies off him. He's a bit crap until later on in the game if truth be told. Very easy to kill.

 

I actually loved that part. Having the main character die over and over again is fun. The Nameless One can sure take some punishment.

 

My charisma is 15 or 16. I choose "leave" or whatever rather than "fight" options.

I'm actually thinking about restarting (I know I'm still at the very early stages of this game). I know this is more of a thinking man's game, which I'm totally into, but I'm also getting very frustrated in these early stages.

I still want to go for a mage-type build with my Nameless One. It seems to fit best. I'm thinking of the following build:

Starting with an 18 WIS, a decent (maybe 12 or 13) INT (since I do want to go for Mage eventually), and a pretty high (14+) STR and CON. I'd take my first 9 levels as a Fighter, then probably go to 10 or 11 as a Mage, and then go for 12 or 13 as a Fighter (whenever that extra bonus sinks in), and the rest as Mage.

From what I understand, if I go to ***** in Dagger, that still applies when I'm a Mage (which will be for most of the game). I'd be missing out on things like the Mage super tattoo, and the INT bonus, but I'd also be able to take advantage of that 19 STR bonus, without having to advance through the exceptional STR ranks, extra attacks per round (and the aforementioned GM in Dagger). Basically, I want to know if that can make up for the bonuses I'd be missing out on with the bonuses from achieving levels 7 and 12 (or 13?) as a Mage.

Whatchya think?

 

Endure and in enduring grow strong.

I started the game with maxed INT and WIS (thought I'd use Friends to boost CHA later on) and wimpy CON, DEX and STR. It worked fine for me. Are you sure you've made use of all the possibilities? Running around while Morte takes the heat off worked fine for me at the beginning.

Most enemies are really slow in PST, you can literally outrun them and pause if you need to check your inventory.

 

I don't think it's worth restarting unless you liked the beginning so much that you want to play it again, you gain the biggest combat power by upgrading TNO and his party members (levels, equipment, weapon specialisation, more members, ...).
Reaching level 7 and 12 as fighter first yields far more useful bonuses than as mage, the drawback is that the XP spent for fighter levels cannot be spent into mage levels, but combat (including XP farming) works much faster with 13 fighter levels.

 

I -think- that you have a much higher chance of getting attacked by thugs if you aren't at full health. If you wander around at 1/4 health you're going to get attacked a -lot-. Rest after taking damage, heal up to full, and you should get attacked quite a bit less. The advice of letting Morte tank is also a good idea.

I thought this also at one time, but I have changed my mind. Getting 13 fighter levels eventually isn't a bad idea, but I still think it's better to get 7 and 12 as a mage first. Reasons:

1) You get a total of 3 stat points for 7/12 fighter (+2 STR, +1 CON) whereas you get 4 stat points for 7/12 mage (+3 INT, +1 WIS).

2) You get a pretty large xp bonus in a certain conversation with a certain NPC only if you are a level 12 specialized mage.

3) If you're going to finish out the game as a mage, but specialized as a fighter, you won't be able to use your specialization tattoos which are quite good.

4) I keep thinking there's a 4th reason, but I can't remember what it is, damnit.

Qwinn

 

1)+2) That's nothing compared to the extra combat power you gain with grandmastery.
There's also a HP bonus you get for the fighter choice.

3) The fighter bonus tattoos (which I consider superior to the mage ones) can be worn by party members who gain the same benefit, there are enough other tattoos for the NO to wear, like wisdom boosters which are useless for other party members.

 

Well, I've just added Dak'kon (so that's where that cool sword in BGII comes from! ), and he seems like he might help me a lot in a fight.

I feel like I might still want to start over, just with a high CON so that I don't have to wait around to heal for much time.

OTOH, I've already made it this far, and part of me wonders if adding stat points to CON is a wise move. I mean, dying just sets me back a little bit in this game. I'm sure my other stats that I've boosted (CHA, INT, WIS) will serve me better, and there will be conversation checks on these stats more often than on CON.

If I stay with what I've got, my concern leans to whether I'll switch to Mage at earliest opportunity (I'm almost a 6th level Fighter) or if I'll stay Fighter for now and switch after 12th level.

 

I tried to maximize my hitpoints by going lvl6 ftr, then switch to mage and level up to level 7, then back to fighter up to level 10, and back to mage. But the downside is that i've got some catching up to do if i want to be a level 12 mage before that point in the game. So I gave TNO all my wisdom boosting tattoos (Dak'kon does benefit from a wisdom boosting tattoo by the way), and decided to keep traversing the Rubikon maze until I get there. And I'm not fooling myself: this will take some time.

Spoiler

You can switch to thief, and gain skills and experience through dialogue with Annah alone. TNO can be a lvl 6 or 7 thief this way. And it benefits Annah in skills too.

 

I guess taking the mage bonuses will be better for your playing style, Klorox. I recommend taking 6 fighter levels, raising mage to 9 afterwards and spend the last 32,000 XP for the extra half attack fighter level 7 yields once the mage level progression slows down.
The fighter bonuses are better, but you'll have to spend 1,186,000 XP for 3.5 instead of 2 attacks/round and a few other bonuses, that's more than 3 mage levels which also yield 3 stat points to raise besides the higher level spells.

The difference between starting with 14+ con compared to raising it later from 9 is only 10 hitpoints, you'll raise con later anyway.
For strength you can just have Dak'kon (or maybe yourself later) cast a level 2 strength spell and wear a +1 strength tattoo to boost it to 18+1=19 if you are lucky, dexterity requires too many points for a little AC bonus, your charisma is high enough for the dialogues and even 12 can be raised to 20 with the friends spell for optimal shop prices, if you have 15 int it will be boosted to optimal 18 with the mage bonuses and you won't feel happy when you already have 25 wisdom when you're supposed to get a boost (although the extra experience for higher wis you'll have gained might have yielded more stat boosts because of extra levels).

 

Just to nitpick, the optimal way to go would be 9 Fighter levels, then go to Mage (Mages get a hit die roll at level 10, Fighters do not). If you really want to maximize HP, Thieves get a hit die roll at 10 as well, and it's better than the Mage one.

What does Dak'kon get from the WIS tattoo? Better saving throws? I thought a WIS tattoo would benefit Fall-From-Grace with additional saving throws or something.

BTW, I started with an 18 WIS, and it just went to 19 from talking to a dude called "O". I don't plan on adding any level-up points to WIS, because it's my understanding that it is completely possible to get it to 25 (the max) without ever adding level-up points into it. I want to get at least a 16 INT, so that it goes to 19 when I wear the Mage tattoo. I would like a naturally high CHA also, since I don't know what dialogues have CHA checks.

What physical stat (mine are all at 9) is best to raise first?

 

It depends. When I've played I've tended to chuck Morte in first, and let him get attacked because of his ridiculous resistance to physical damage. Then I chuck everyone else in to do the damage. So, because of that I tended to invest in strength. If you tend to use TNO as a tank I'd get points in dexterity though.

 

Yep, that's the way to go for max HP.

IIRC Grace can't have tattoos. In fact I think the only people who can are TNO, Annah and Dak'kon.

Makes sense for INT and WIS. However for CHA you can just rely on the Friends spell, which (I think) lasts a while and boosts your CHA by several points (up to 5).